Curious Creatures in Zoology. Ashton John

them had the slightest idea of navigation; they couldn’t even steer or row – so they had to drift about, until they came to Cremni (supposed to be near Taganrog), which was Scythian territory. They signalised their landing by horse-stealing, and the Scythians, not appreciating the joke, gave them battle, thinking they were men; but an examination of the dead proved them to be of the other sex. On learning this, the Scythians were far too gentlemanly to continue the strife, and, little by little, they established the most friendly relations with the Amazons. These ladies, however, objected to go to the Scythians’ homes, for, as they pertinently put it, “We never could live with the women of your county, because we have not the same customs with them. We shoot with the bow, throw the javelin, and ride on horseback, and have never learnt the employments of women. But your women do none of the things we have mentioned, but are engaged in women’s work, remaining in their wagons, and do not go out to hunt, or anywhere else; we could not therefore consort with them. If, then, you desire to have us for your wives, and to prove yourselves honest men, go to your parents, claim your share of their property, then return, and let us live by ourselves.”

      This the young Scythians did, but, when they returned, the Amazons said they were afraid to stop where they were, for they had deprived parents of their sons, and besides, had committed depredations in the country, so that they thought it but prudent to leave, and suggested that they should cross the Tanais, or Don, and found a colony on the other side. This their husbands acceded to, and when they were settled, their wives returned to their old way of living – hunting, going to war with their husbands, and wearing the same clothes – in fact they enjoyed an actual existence, of which many women nowadays, fondly, but vainly dream. There was a little drawback however – the qualification for a young lady’s presentation at court, consisted of killing a man, and, until that was effected, she could not marry.

      Sir John Mandeville of course knew all about them, although he does not pretend to have seen them, and this is what he tells us. “After the land of Caldee, is the land of Amazony, that is a land where there is no man but all women, as men say, for they wil suffer no man to lyve among them, nor to have lordeshippe over them. For sometyme was a kinge in that lande, and men were dwelling there as did in other countreys, and had wives, & it befell that the kynge had great warre with them of Sychy, he was called Colopius, and he was slaine in bataill and all the good bloude of his lande. And this Queene, when she herd that, & other ladies of that land, that the king and the lordes were slaine, they gathered them togither and killed all the men that were lefte in their lande among them, and sithen that time dwelled no man among them.

      “And when they will have any man, they sende for them in a countrey that is nere theyr lande, and the men come, and are ther viii dayes, or as the woman lyketh, & then they go againe, and if they have men children they send them to theyr fathers, when they can eate & go, and if they have maide chyldren they kepe them, and if they bee of gentill bloud they brene15 the left pappe16 away, for bearing of a shielde, and, if they be of little bloud, they brene the ryght pappe away for shoting. For those women of that countrey are good warriours, and are often in soudy17 with other lordes, and the queene of that lande governeth well that lande; this lande is all environed with water.”

      Pygmies

      The antitheses of men – Dwarfs, and Giants – must not be overlooked, as they are abnormal, and yet have existed in all ages. Dwarfs are mentioned in the Bible, Leviticus xxi. 20, where following the injunction of “Let him not approach to offer the bread of his God” – are mentioned the “crookbackt or dwarf.” Dwarfs in all ages have been made the sport of Royalty, and the wealthy; but it is not of them I write, but of a race called the Pygmies, very small men who were descended from Pygmæus. They are noted in the earliest classics, for even Homer mentions them in his Iliad (B. 3, l. 3–6), which Pope translates: —

      “So, when inclement winter vex the plain

      With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain,

      To warmer seas, the Cranes embody’d fly,

      With noise, and order, through the mid-way sky;

      To pigmy nations, wounds and death they bring,

      And all the war descends upon the wing.”

      Homer also wrote a poem, “Pygmæogeranomachia,” about the Pygmies and Cranes. The accompanying illustration is from a fresco at Pompeii.

      Aristotle says that they lived in holes under the earth, and came out in the harvest time with hatchets, to cut down the corn, as if to fell a forest, and went on goats and lambs of proportionable stature to themselves to make war against certain birds, called Cranes by some, which came there yearly from Scythia to plunder them. Pliny mentions them several times, but especially in B. 7, c. 2. “Beyond these people, and at the very extremity of the mountains, the Trispithami,18 and the Pygmies are said to exist; two races, which are but three spans in height, that is to say, twenty-seven inches only. They enjoy a salubrious atmosphere, and a perpetual spring, being sheltered by the mountains from the northern blasts; it is these people that Homer has mentioned as being waged war upon by Cranes. It is said that they are in the habit of going down every spring to the sea-shore, in a large body, seated on the backs of rams and goats, and armed with arrows, and there destroy the eggs and the young of those birds; that this expedition occupies them for the space of three months, and that otherwise it would be impossible for them to withstand the increasing multitudes of the Cranes. Their cabins, it is said, are built of mud, mixed with feathers and egg shells.”

      Mandeville thus describes them. “When men passe from that citie of Chibens, they passe over a great river of freshe water, and it is nere iiii mile brode, & then men enter into the lande of the great Caan. This river goeth through the land of Pigmeens, and there men are of little stature, for they are but three span long, and they are right fayre, both men and women, though they bee little, and they live but viii19 yeare, and he that liveth viii yeare is holden right olde, and these small men are the best workemen in sylke, and of cotton, in all maner of thing that are in the worlde; and these smal men travail not, nor tyl land, but they have amonge them great men, as we are, to travaill for them, & they have great scorne of those great men, as we would have of giaunts, or, of them, if they were among us.”

      Ser Marco Polo warns his readers against pseudo Pygmies. Says he: “I may tell you moreover that when people bring over pygmies which they allege to come from India, ’tis all a lie and a cheat. For those little men, as they call them, are manufactured on this Island (Sumatra), and I will tell you how. You see there is on the Island a kind of monkey which is very small, and has a face just like a man’s. They take these, and pluck out all the hair, except the hair of the beard, and on the breast, and then dry them, and stuff them, and daub them with saffron, and other things, until they look like men. But you see it is all a cheat; for nowhere in India, nor anywhere else in the world, were there ever men seen so small as these pretended pygmies.”

      But there are much more modern mention of these small folk. Olaus Magnus not only reproduces the classical story, but tells of the Pygmies of Greenland – the modern Esquimaux. These are also mentioned in Purchas his Pilgrimage, as living in Iceland, “pigmies represent the most perfect shape of man; that they are hairy to the uttermost joynts of the fingers, and that the males have beards downe to the knees; but, although they have the shape of men, yet they have little sense or understanding, nor distinct speech, but make shew of a kinde of hissing, after the manner of geese.”

      But to bring the history of pygmies down to modern times – I quote from “Giants and Dwarfs,” by E. J. Wood, 1868, and I am thus particular in giving my authority, as the news comes from America, whence, sometimes, fact is mixed with fiction (pp. 246, 247, 248). “It is alleged by contemporary newspapers, that in 1828 several burying-grounds, from half an acre to an acre and a half in extent, were discovered in the county of White, state of Tennessee, near the town of Sparta, wherein very small people had been deposited in tombs or coffins of stone. The greatest length of the skeletons was nineteen inches. The bones

15

Burn.

16

Breast.

17

At war.

18

From τρεις, three, σπιθαμὰι, spans.

19

Other editions say six or seven years.